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Making It New: the Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy

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Making It New: the Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy 1p.Rothschild,Making it New 5/23/07 1:26 PM Page 1 INTRODUCTION DEBORAH ROTHSCHILD “Day by day make it new/Yet again make it new!”1 Ezra It is not surprising that Sara and Gerald Murphy were Pound’s charge to his generation sums up Sara and Ger- among those drawn to Europe after the war. From the ald Murphy’s philosophy and achievement. They not only beginning of their marriage in 1915, they were determined pioneered a modern way of living but also elevated to blaze a path that diverged from the expectations into an art form the notion of making each day “new.” of their families and the constricted, snobbish, socially Archibald MacLeish called them “the representative elite world into which they were born. It was critical to figures of their age” because, as transatlantic avant- Gerald—unusual in those times—that he and Sara be gardes, they epitomized the many expatriates who flour- equal partners in creating an existence anchored by “the ished amid the artistic ferment in France during the real issues of life: home, children, work, friends, nature” 1920s.2 and “not things.”4 In 1919 he declared to Sara: “What we When the Murphys and their young children arrived are doing is fresh, new, and alive.”5 in France in 1921, Europe was just beginning to recover Gerald, who began to study art only after arriving in from the senseless devastation brought about by the Paris, is increasingly recognized as a significant painter Great War, which had decimated a generation of youth even though he produced just a small body of work. and shattered established values and ideals. Europe wel- Moreover, as a couple, the Murphys were concep- comed spirited young people from the United States and tual/performance artists avant la lettre. They expended elsewhere, who found that many cities, especially Paris, great effort, although it never seemed forced or calcu- offered an open milieu for unfettered expression. The lated, to make each moment original and meaningful. anything-goes atmosphere fostered invention and the One friend noted that even the most mundane act—the exchange of ideas, and art, literature, music, and theater way Gerald prepared a cocktail, or a walk from the Mur- thrived. “Every day was different and there was always phys’ house to the beach—was somehow transformed something exciting going on,” reminisced Gerald, citing into a memorable event: “He was a very exciting person a menu of balls, exhibitions, theatricals, manifestations, to be around because there was always something new nightclubs, and cafés.3 about everything he did and the way he perceived things was fresh.”6 The Murphys’ life became an artistic exer- cise, informed by discipline, a keen sense of pleasure, and Caption to come. aesthetic complexity. In addition to creating art, Sara and Gerald served as 1 1p.Rothschild,Making it New 5/23/07 1:26 PM Page 2 muses to some of the major figures of twentieth-century Calvin Tomkins introduces us to the Murphys, whom arts and letters. John O’Hara wrote to Gerald in 1962: he met when they and his young family both lived at Sne- “All your friends wanted to capture Gerald and Sara and dens Landing in the late 1950s. In time they became close their life—the life, the way of life.”7 The Murphys are best friends, and Sara and Gerald opened up to Tomkins in a known as the models for Dick and Nicole Diver in F. Scott way they did with few other people during their long lives. Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, but they also inspired Privy to hours of reminiscing by the Murphys, Tomkins other novels, short stories, poems, paintings, plays, arti- experienced “the freshness and excitement of early mod- cles, memoirs, and biographies. Many literary friends re- ernism in the 1920s.” His profile of the Murphys, “Living called their time in the Murphys’ company as the best Well Is the Best Revenge,” first appeared in The New moments in their lives. In part this was because, as Linda Yorker in 1962 and was later expanded into a book. In his Patterson Miller notes in her essay here, for a brief period essay “Remembering Gerald and Sara,” Tomkins conveys Sara and Gerald personified an aspect of the main liter- the Murphys’ “utterly captivating” charm, as well as Ger- ary theme of the era, a kind of dream life—life as we ald’s wistfulness about his unfinished career as an artist. would like it to be—which stands in sharp contrast to life My essay offers an overview of Sara and Gerald’s lives, as it really is. with a particular emphasis on the 1920s and 1930s. I draw The Murphys were also in some sense patrons of the largely on their own words or those of friends and fam- arts. Although they never asked for works of art or fa- ily, often from unpublished letters, diaries, and inter- vors in return, they actively supported the careers of views. Gerald is the focus of most of the essays in this such “unknowns” at the time as Ernest Hemingway, Fer- book, largely because he was the one who consciously nand Léger, Cole Porter, John Dos Passos, Archibald invented and realized “a private vision of paradise, im- MacLeish, and Dorothy Parker. In addition to advice and bued with warmth, beauty, intellect and taste.”8 But none encouragement, the Murphys offered introductions and of this would have been possible without Sara. She was financial assistance. They championed new art forms well Gerald’s model for all that was best in life. I have tried past the 1920s, continuing to sustain artist-friends even to convey through her letters her contribution to their after the Depression devastated their fortunes. That the partnership and her warmth, love of life, and originality.9 Better? SMH/ICS Murphys’ circle of friends in France included so many Much of the Murphys’ story is about friendship, and Sara talents who were to emerge as artistic giants was no co- lavished an almost maternal warmth and attentiveness on incidence. Sara and Gerald were not only uncannily at- the people she loved. My essay also offers an analysis of tuned to the future; they were also people of sophisti- Gerald’s small body of work. His paintings represent a cated and ecumenical taste. They were at once open to particularly American response to the modern school of everything and exceedingly choosy, and they paid close Paris and, like many Cubist and Surrealist works, contain attention to the things and especially the people they coded or hidden references. cared about. In “The Murphy Closet and the Murphy Bed,” Kenneth The very broadness of the Murphys’ interests— E. Silver, an expert on French art and culture of the early encompassing music, dance, art, literature, and poetry twentieth century, examines Gerald Murphy’s impecca- (not to mention gardening, design, and cuisine)—calls for ble style in light of conflicts about his sexual orientation. responses from experts in a variety of disciplines. Like Silver brings insight and compassion to understanding Cubist art of the period, which often filters the same Murphy’s struggle to repress and hide leanings that were scene through multiple, overlying views, the ten essays unacceptable at the time. The manner in which conceal- included here each address a different aspect of the Mur- ment “helped to shape the life he led and the art he made” phys’ lives, friends, art, and influence, thereby offering a is explored through Gerald’s self-presentation: from his fuller, more nuanced, and multiperspectival understand- literal costumes (for fancy dress balls) to his daily clothes ing of who they were and what their place in history is. (business and casual attire) to, ironically, his nudism—a There is inevitably some overlap in such an interdiscipli- penchant for which is apparent in many photographs. Sil- nary approach, with certain key events, reactions, and ver decodes Gerald Murphy’s lost self-portrait of 1928 as personal characteristics reiterated and at times contra- “a portrait of the artist as a gay man looking out from the dicted from essay to essay. closet” and compares it to the work of Jasper Johns. 2 INTRODUCTION 1p.Rothschild,Making it New 5/23/07 1:26 PM Page 3 Related to Silver’s thesis is Amanda Vaill’s considera- tion of Gerald Murphy’s theatrical impulses. Murphy’s in- terest in all forms of theater, she argues, offered a means of disguise from uncomfortable truths, since “in the the- ater concealment is normative and unconventional be- havior unexceptional.” Vaill, the Murphys’ most thorough and engaging biographer, discusses Gerald and Sara’s in- teractions in 1920s Paris with the revolutionary Kamerny Theater of Moscow and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; Ger- ald’s collaboration with Cole Porter on Within the Quota for the Ballets Suédois; and back in America, his last ex- cursion into the theater, the ballet Ghost Town, created in 1939 for Serge Denham’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She also discusses MacLeish’s play J.B., making the case (as Linda Patterson Miller does in regard to Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls) that this literary work by a close friend referred to a period of estrangement in the Mur- phys’ marriage, after tragic loss, which was followed by reconciliation and a strengthening of their relationship. Trevor Winkfield brings both an artist’s and a writer’s eye to his analysis of Gerald Murphy’s notebook, which contains entries for forty-two possible pictures (plus one for a “construction in frame”)—only a small number of which were completed.
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